Origami-Kids is a web site specifically for plane and boat lovers and is organised neatly to display over 50 models of gliders,
hunters, vortexes, tumbling planes and boats. Each paper model is pictured in detail, along with instructions on how to make them fly. The categories mentioned above are
according to the type of planes — for e.g., hunters would fly fast whereas gliders would cover long distance by staying afloat in the air for longer.

miércoles, 28 de septiembre de 2016

Origami in your car. That’s the way the airbag folds!

Origami in your car. That’s the way the airbag folds! http://eng.origami-kids.com/origami-news/origami-in-your-car-airbag-folds.htm

The integration of origami, art, and technology offers unique opportunities to create products important to society. Origami is particularly well-suited for applications such as automobile airbags because it can be very compact, expand to a large size, and it enables folded patterns to be packed into unique shapes. This flexibility in packing into different shapes is increasingly important for automobile designers. This paper describes the design, testing, and manufacture of two origami patterns for packing airbags into cylindrical spaces, and shows that when folding airbags with origami patterns, the pattern and the packing method both influence how the airbag deploys.

Packing and deploying Soft Origami to and from cylindrical volumes with application to automotive airbags

Packing soft-sheet materials of approximately zero bending stiffness using Soft Origami (origami patterns applied to soft-sheet materials) into cylindrical volumes and their deployment via mechanisms or internal pressure (inflation) is of interest in fields including automobile airbags, deployable heart stents, inflatable space habitats, and dirigible and parachute packing. This paper explores twofold patterns, the ‘flasher’ and the ‘inverted-cone fold’, for packing soft-sheet materials into cylindrical volumes. Two initial packing methods and mechanisms are examined for each of the flasher and inverted-cone fold patterns. An application to driver’s side automobile airbags is performed, and deployment tests are completed to compare the influence of packing method and origami pattern on deployment performance. Following deployment tests, two additional packing methods for the inverted-cone fold pattern are explored and applied to automobile airbags. It is shown that modifying the packing method (using different methods to impose the same base pattern on the soft-sheet material) can lead to different deployment performance. In total, two origami patterns and six packing methods are examined, and the benefits of using Soft Origami patterns and packing methods are discussed. Soft Origami is presented as a viable method for efficiently packing soft-sheet materials into cylindrical volumes.

An undeployed flasher pattern with cylindrical envelope shown around it. Specified height H and diameter D are variables of interest.

4. Discussion and conclusion

In this paper, fold patterns and packing methods have been introduced and evaluated to efficiently pack soft-sheet materials into cylindrical packed shapes with configurable folded (packed) height and diameter, deployed (unfolded) shape and deployed size. Deployment performance and the impact of packing method on deployment was also explored. Twofold patterns (the flasher and the inverted-cone fold) and a total of two packing methods for the first pattern and four for the second pattern were presented as viable solutions. Application to automotive airbags was explored and results showed promise, although the flasher was shown to be less-than-ideal for driver’s side airbags and would probably be more valuable in other Soft Origami applications.

Both fold patterns have adjustable stowed height and diameter, deployed shape and deployed size while folding into approximately cylindrical shapes. We were able to influence the behaviour of the airbag using this approach, and preliminary testing showed that we were able to specify packed behaviour, unfolding behaviour via pressure difference deployment and final deployed shape. Both patterns showed favourable improvements in packing an airbag into a cylindrical shape with sufficient room underneath the packed material for an inflator.

Multiple possible methods were created and explored to fold the inverted-cone fold and flasher fold patterns using a rigid frame that is later removed. After frame removal, the folds are ready to be deployed by way of a pressure differential. The patterns, shown through an application to automotive airbag folding, accomplished the desired goals of the research. The packing methods demonstrated here have been shown to work when folded by hand (with a combination of a mechanism and human intervention), but have not yet been automated, which could be a topic of further work.

Another accomplishment of this research was the modification of packing method based on deployment performance. Although the same pattern (the inverted-cone fold) was used, different packing methods were shown to influence deployment performance, which is probably true of many Soft Origami patterns and applications. That is, unlike traditional origami, where fold lines constrain behaviour, Soft Origami allows for a more quantitative approach wherein the same pattern can be packed using many different methods (with varying fidelity to the original pattern) depending on the application constraints. However, different packing methods and levels of discretization result in packed patterns that match the original desired pattern with varying degrees of fidelity.

In conclusion, multiple patterns and packing methods were presented that are well-suited for packing a soft-sheet material into a cylindrical volume prior to deployment via internal pressure. Another unique development in this work is the use of an origami-pattern-inspired folding frame to impose the pattern on the soft-sheet materials, and then removing the folding frame and maintaining the folded shape for use in deployment via pressure difference (e.g. inflation). This is advantageous for a mechanism or structure that would present a safety hazard to humans if it had a rigid understructure when deploying. In an application to automotive airbags, we also demonstrated the principle of modifying the packing method (within the same origami fold pattern) based on deployment performance and requirements.

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Origami Kids is specifically for plane and boat lovers and is organised neatly to display over 50 models of gliders, hunters, vortexes, tumbling paper planes and origami boats. Each paper model is pictured in detail, along with instructions on how to make them fly. The categories mentioned above are according to the type of planes — for e.g., hunters would fly fast whereas gliders would cover long distance by staying afloat in the air for longer.

Select an airplane to view its folding instructions which appear as animation. The instructions are displayed with a starting paper on the left, folds or creases to be made are animated in the middle, and the resultant shape is presented on the right. At the bottom, there are buttons to for 'Next' and 'Back' to move to required steps.

While creating these planes with standard letter or A4 sized pages (used for printouts and photocopies), also read user comments on how they found the planes. One of the interesting sections present here is 'Flight Simulators'. These are Flash games allowing paper plane flights in different conditions such as height, speed and angle, etc. Next section worth taking a look at is 'Origami Flowers' with models such as popcorn cup, bang (noise creator), turtle, duck and bat, etc. To further improvise these origami models, coloured papers and markers can be used as well.